PE fund managers looking to take graduation ceremonies private, so they can speak at them

Despite the “New Kings of Wall Street” moniker, PE fund managers for the most part are getting snubbed when it comes to giving graduation and class day speeches at their alma maters, or anywhere else for that matter. HBS invited Bill Gates for graduation and AmEx CEO Kenneth Chenault for class day, leaving former grads Steve Schwarzman and Leon Black looking for crab cakes. Other B-school speakers - Columbia has former Treasury Secretary and Goldman banker Robert Rubin, Stanford has NEA chair Dana Gioia, Tuck (Dartmouth) has McGraw-Hill CEO Harold McGraw III, Kellogg (Northwestern) has Wrigley CEO William Perez, Wharton has steel mogul Lakshmi Mittal. The exceptions - this year the only notable one is the University of Chicago, which invited Evercore Partners chair Roger Altman to speak. Altman is a Lehman and Blackstone alum, and only really counts because Evercore is boutique enough of an I-bank so that its PE operations make it more of a PE firm than one of the bulge brackets. Last year Elevation and Silver Lake co-founder Roger McNamee spoke at Tuck.New Kings of Wall Street Aren’t Making the Grade [Wall Street Journal Deal Journal]